ABSTRACT
Russia is not, at the time of writing, a member of the right clubs. It is not in the World Trade Organization (WTO), it is not in the European Union (EU), not in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), not in NATO, and counts for only a half in the G-7½. For a country that is reentering society after seventy years of semi-isolation, and one that is economically small (0.8 percent of world output at the exchange rate, 2.6 percent of world output at purchasing power parity in 2000, according to the World Bank), this is an economic handicap.
